Keitaro Urashima: The Movie
by Sci-Fi Raptor
Summary: Keitaro decides to buy something with mmoney he got from a Naru punch. But when he goes to buy it, someone points a gun to his face! Keitaro's life turns into an action movie where ambushes, unknown tropical viruses, car bombs and Noluk plants await!


**Keitaro**** Urashima: The Movie**

**By: **Sci-Fi Raptor

**Disclaimer:** LH and its characters are not mine. Everyone else is.

(-O-)

**_This is movie based on the life of Keitaro Urashima. It takes place after his fourth entrance exam to Todai. Instead of going on a boat to Parakerusu, he decides to buy a car instead._**

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**_Produce in part by Su's Virtual-kun_**

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**_A MoonStar Cinema production._******

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**_Directed by Sci-Fi Raptor_**

"Pervert!"

**It was that time again.**

"B-but Naru!"

**Kistune acted drunk.**

"This is your end, Urashima!"

**I fell for the act.**

"When will you get enough!"

**You know the rest…**

"But it wasn't my-" I go sailing through the walls.

**At least that time I landed somewhere inside the Hinata-sou…**

"You get me that sake I wanted, and I won't tell them about _this_," Kitsune says after I stop in one of the walls. She holds a compromising photo of the both of us.

**Hey, she didn't blackmail me into getting the really expensive one at least…**

I sigh and pick myself up. At least I am prepared for it this time; my wallet is full. Because, today is the day!

TODAY, I GET MY CAR!

**It was summer and I really didn't want to walk around under the harsh Japanese sun if I didn't have to.**

I stand up and dust myself off and merrily walk out of the house. I smile as a walk to the dealership and casually walk in.

_ I really should thank Naru for this. If she hadn't punched me to that casino the other night, I wouldn't have bet my last 10 yen on that slot machine and won the jackpot. Yup, when I go home, I'll really have to thank her._

"Hello… sir," says the first dealer I happen to meet. "You are here to buy a car, correct?" he says, looking me up and down.

Well, I should have expected as much; I did look like I was punched through walls! But to reassure his worries, I take out my wallet and show him the money. His face lights up and he leads me to the showroom.

"So, sir, were you interested in the new Elise? Or are you an enthusiast that wants the Espirit?" the Lotus dealer says, waving his hand at the expensive cars before us.

**I would have loved to have the Espirit, but it was way too expensive and ate up much more gas than the Elise. The Elise was small, had decent mileage and was built for someone of my… stature.**

"I wanted an Elise," I say. "Just the base model though. I've heard that the other trims aren't all that great." The dealer frowns a little. He was hoping I was dumb enough not to do my research.

"Well, sir, right this way. Would you like a test drive?" he says, eager to get this over with.

"YES!" I say enthusiastically. I try to calm myself. The dealer, with his frowning face, heads out to the storage lot. He picks up a set of keys from the main office and lets me into the driver's seat.

"Hey, this isn't too bad once you can get in," I say, getting used to the once piece seat.

"I assume you know how to use a stick?" the dealer says, a bit annoyed. I was starting to think he was looking down at me for some reason.

"Stick?" I ask.

"The transmission?" he asks incredulously.

"Oh! You mean manual! I've been training with Seta for it."

"Good. Then why don't we get going?" the dealer says.

**Though I couldn't possibly know, he was wondering where he heard that name. **

Ten minutes later, we were back at the lot. The dealer was holding onto his seat as if he were at the edge of the cliff. When I put the car into park, he jumps out and stands on the ground on all fours.

"LAND!" he says, and… kisses the pavement!

"Well, I really like this car. Why don't you just ask your manager for its price and let's see if we can work out a deal?"

"Well, you're in luck. I _am_ the manager. And since this is a test drive vehicle, ill give you 25 off."

"Really?"

"Yes!" he says.

**He added so I couldn't hear, "No one's gonna buy it after what you did to it…" **

"Let me get the paperwork and you can be on your way!" he says, and runs to the office.

I sit in the car, with the key still in the ignition and wait. I remark at the quiet purr that the Elise's engine made, and the nearly imperceptible shifts it made when I was driving. As I was lost in my thoughts, a sudden thud brings me back to my senses.

"I didn't do anything Naru, I swear!" I say instantly. When no punishment comes, I look to my left, and I see that a person with a visored helmet has landed in the car next to mine and is making his or her way to the passenger side of my car and got in.

**The person, it turned out, was actually a she. Just my luck…**

"Drive," she says simply, looking over her shoulder.

"But, I didn't pay for this car yet!" I say, bewildered.

"Drive the fraggin' car!" she repeats, this time a gun pointing at my face.

I yelp and step on it, causing her gun's barrel to clip my face.

"Where am I heading for!" I yell, as we get closer and closer to the exit.

"Away from them!" she yells back, pointing behind us. I look at the rearview mirror and see a bunch of men on motorcycles following us. I take a left and close my window so we didn't have to scream to each other to talk.

But she keeps hers open. Instead, she takes her whole body out to that she is facing them and I suddenly hear popping noises. I look to the rear view mirror and see one of them fall. I look away just before his bike crushes him at the fast speed we are traveling.

"Keep it up!" she screams at me and more popping noises fill the air. I don't pay much attention. All I can think of is the red light ahead. And the million cars that were stopping in front of it.

_Crap_

**So, here are my choices. One: slam into the traffic and die. Or Two: try to turn around and probably get shot at by the bikers, who probably cause the many bullet holes that lined the back of my Elise.**

_The back of my stolen Elise!_ I remind myself. I choose number three: swerve into the sidewalk and hope to God that I didn't plow through a bunch of people.

"Hold on!" I yell and swerve to the left. The Elise was very low to the ground, so I hear a sickening grinding sound when we jump the curb, but the car was thankfully still running. And miraculously, no one got hit! To try and confuse our mysterious pursuers, I take a left instead of heading straight and luck out into joining moving, uncongested traffic. When I hear more popping noises, I know that I had no such luck.

I saw a sign for an onramp to the highway and force my way to it, getting a few dents and scratches. It actually helps us a little, because the cars I maul stop and their drivers come out, angrily shaking their hands at us and causing havoc for the cyclists. When I reach the highway, I make the car go as fast as it could. And for the half-minute we accelerate, we lose them, but suddenly the car stops accelerating. I look at the speedometer and realize in horror that we had max out the transmission at only 15mph, and that the bikers are gaining on us.

**At this point, my brain realized I should be scared poop-less…**

I freeze up, and start to scream bloody murder, till the person that had shanghaied me and almost my Elise comes back in and slaps me.

"What the hell's wrong with you! You act like you've never been chased by goons in your life," she says.

"I HAVEN'T BEEN CHASED BY GOONS IN MY LIFE!" I yell at her, the shock finally subsiding. "AND WHO THE HELL ARE YOU! WHY DID YOU KIDNAP ME!"

"Actually…" she starts in a thoughtful tone, though it was a bit muffled by her helmet. "I commandeered you and this car…"

Pocka pow!

Bullets start flying our way as the cyclists finally catch up, since they have a much larger max speed. My kidnapper goes out the window and catches them by surprise. She hits two of them and they careen into two more, making them to crash onto the highway and get mauled by the drivers behind them. There was only one more guy left, but he shoots her before she can. She hangs over the side, limp, and was sliding out. I desperately grab her with my hand to keep her from falling, but I am too weak. In a last ditch effort, I swerve left hard and pull her in.

**What I didn't know was that I ended up going under the trailer of a truck, narrowly avoiding death, just for it come back for me later probably, but it was still actiony. The last cyclist chased after me, but his bike was just too tall and he crashed headfirst into the trailer. The trailer ran over his bike, and I hope he bailed out before that.**

I look at the rear view mirror and am surprised to see that no one is chasing us. I just hope they gave up on us, since it turns out we are almost out of gas! I get off at the closest exit and head straight to a gas station. My first impulse is to run screaming to a telephone and scream to the police what has happened to me, but I know better. The police dispatch has gotten to know me by now and never believes any of the things that happen to me in the Hinata-sou, so I will probably be ignored. I will have to go to a police station so I will have proof.

**Yeah… right…**

I walk up to the register. I fidget through my wallet and give him what I think will be enough. I end up getting a full tank after talking to him a little.

**Hey, I was very nervous and sweating like a pig and I needed an explanation…**

So, I stand next to my stolen car that is missing a license plate and anxiously wait for the tank to fill. As soon as it does, I get away as quickly as I can.

_Think, Keitaro think! Where was the police station when you landed next to it?_

**I was so busy trying to remember, I actually passed it.**

_I know its somewhere around here…_

"Rouge 1. Come in Rouge 1! Do you copy!" a voice says from nowhere. I get so scared that I almost crash into the car next to me! When the voice won't stop, I pull over and nervously listen for where it's coming from.

**It was coming from her wrist, just to save you the ten-minute agony…**

I grab her arm and stare at the watch on her wrist. It was kind of big for a girl, but I realize that it isn't a watch after I accidentally push a button… and a LCD screen pops up!

"Rouge 1?" the watch asks.

"Ahh!" I scream and let go of her arm.

"Who's there? Answer me!" the watch demands.

"No one, I'm not here!" I say and triy to open my door.

**Here's the funny part: it wouldn't open.**

I struggle to open the door, but to no avail.

**Then I almost peed myself because of what happened next…**

The engine starts by itself. I think that maybe it started because I had accidentally turned it on in my frenzy to escape the cursed Elise, and I turn it off. But it starts again. And then it puts itself into drive and starts driving itself. I mean, the thing was doing manual on automatic for God's sake!

"I have taken over your vehicle" the watch says. "Whoever you are, I demand that you show yourself." Seeing no other alternative, I shakily reach my hand out for her wrist and bring the watch close enough to see the screen. On it was a fairly old middle-aged man who was in the later stages of balding. He is wearing a suit as if he is a businessman. He doesn't look Japanese; he didn't look Asian for that matter.

**He was actually Russian.**

"Who are you?" he demands, a scowl on his face.

"K-Keitaro," I stutter.

"What is Iva's status?" he demands once again. I look back at him dumbly.

"Who's Iva?" I ask.

**I would laugh about this later in life. Really, I would…**

"The agent to whom this communicator belongs to, you dolt!"

"Oh," I said, and look her over. She's in good shape, that I am sure of. I am sure of that because her jumpsuit doesn't leave much for the imagination… She still has her helmet on, but I don't want to touch her if I didn't have to. Back to her jumpsuit, she has a hole on her right shoulder. I assume that's where she'd been hit.

"She's unconscious now, but she's been hit on the shoulder," I report quickly. I don't want him to get mad at me; he was driving the car! He stays quiet for a few moments on the other side, contemplating something. He looks to the side and types something in.

"Is she still breathing?" he asks a few moments later. I don't know, so I moved to check. Then I remember that she has a helmet on. I still don't want to touch her, but the wrist-man gets impatient. Instead of taking her helmet off, however, I put my ear up to the front of her helmet and listen. When I hear the harsh, raspy breath of the woman, I give the affirmative.

"Excellent," he says, very pleased. "Now, take the revival module and put it anywhere on her skin." When I don't make a move, he adds, "It's the red thing. She should have put it somewhere you could find it."

"Okay," I say, and look for the red thing. I look everywhere on her, getting to 'know' her pretty well, but it takes a minute before I find it. It's shaped like an egg that's flatter on one side of symmetry than the other.

**Guess where it was?**

It's between _them_. I think I am understandably wary about reaching for it, but wrist-man eggs me on. I grab for it quickly, lucky enough not to touch any of _them_. Even with the red thing in my hand, I look over my shoulder to see if I've been caught. When I see no one, I stop cringing.

"So what do I do now?" I ask. Wrist-man looks annoyed.

"Just put it on her anywhere that will let it make contact with her skin. Jerry out," he says and the LCD display disappears into the communicator. I look at her to see where her skin is exposed and see that the only places are her neck and hands. I don't want any of my accidents to happen, so I don't take chances and put the red in her hand. Surprisingly, when I put my hand on top of hers, she holds onto it gently. I assume that her eyes flutter for a second behind her visor as she comes back to consciousness.

**I would learn very soon why she suddenly came back to consciousness because of the red thing.**

Her grip suddenly gets much tighter and starts to hurt.

**I would also learn how strong she could be as well.**

Still crushing my hand within hers, she slowly sits up and asks her communicator, "What's going on Jerry?" The display pops up again and the wrist-guy is there again. She lets my wrist go when I start to whine.

"You were temporarily unconscious. That civilian activated the nano-meds so that they could heal the wound on your shoulder and reactivate your nervous system."

"Was it that bad?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I'm controlling the vehicle you're in and will drop you off at the LZ. Take the civilian so that he can be debriefed. Jerry out." Again, the display disappears.

"You revived me?" she states, more than says.

"Yeah," I say sheepishly. She looks down at her chest, then snaps back up to me.

"Per-"

**I wonder what she's gonna say?**

"-fect… that was my last revival module! And for a stupid flesh wound too…" she says, and looks at the wound. She tears off the shoulder of her jumpsuit so that the flesh is now exposed. The wound is grisly, with blood caking the whole region, but the flesh itself seems very uninjured.

"Guess the nano-meds were pretty fast this time around," she says to herself.

"Um… what did he mean about me being debriefed? I don't have anything to do with this. All I wanted to do was buy a car!" She looked at me with pity as I waved my arms and… expressed how inconvenienced I was by the whole ordeal.

"Hey, don't worry too much. Once we hit the LZ, everything will be explained to you. For now, just try to enjoy the ride," she says, while taking her helmet off.

**I was completely taken aback by her beauty. I was left speechless, though she thought I was actually listening to her.**

"You know, you have good taste. Though it's a bit cramped in here, it's a very smooth ride," she adds. I just kept on glancing at her, keeping my mouth shut. She has raven black hair at the top of her head that fades into a nice dark velvety auburn towards the ends of her hair, which goes down to the small of her back. Her skin is a very pale shade of pink, much paler than any Japanese person, but her face is very Japanese, which makes me think that she is a hybrid with sort of some Western descent. I can't tell at first because her voice sounded pure and she spoke Japanese fluently. Her lips are a dark pink gloss that mixes in pleasantly with her face and doesn't scream for attention like how some women do their makeup. She has eyeliner on her eyes to emphasize them, but from the angle I am looking at her from, I can't tell what color they are.

**Unfortunately for both of us, I would become very familiar with her eyes. They were a sparkling emerald green and contrasted very nicely with the rest of her body. She always did remind me of a Sakura blossom…**

I ask her a few questions to make the time go by, but she will either dodge them or ignore them. She won't say anything when I asked her about the nano-meds, and she says something about Jerry being a boss of sorts when I ask about him. The rest of the trip remains silent, her taking a nap and me driving, since Jerry needed to recharge something before he could take over for us again. At one of the gas stations we stop at, I buy a postcard from some other country and write to the girls that I'm going to take an interview for a job in Japan, but the interviewing place is in another country. I knew it sounded ridiculous, and the girls might get suspicious, but I didn't want to worry them after leaving so early without saying why. I bet that by now, Naru felt a little guilty for hitting me this morning. I mean, she didn't put her heart into it, otherwise I would have landed somewhere outside of the Hinata-sou, so she must have just done it for show. We have an unsaid understanding; the things I do for her… I sent the postcard as we started the last leg of our journey.

It is about sunset when we reach wherever Jerry wants us to go in the directions he sends us and I am pleasantly surprised to find that it's near a beach. I become grumpy as we drive further along and end up in some ship docks.

"Are we there yet?" I ask for the millionth time, just to see if she has woken up yet. I remember that Jerry called her Iva when he wanted me to revive her, so I whisper to her "Iva… " and give her a gentle nudge.

"We there yet?" she says groggily, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She reminds me of Shinobu for some reason. It must be how childish she seems right now.

"If I followed Jerry's directions right, then yes," I reply. She looks at me and looks at our surroundings.

"This can't be right…" she says, and grabs the instructions from my hands. She reads them over and looks at our surroundings again. We're completely surrounded by cargo containers. "Pull up ten more meters," she says confidently. I put the car into gear and do as she says. To my surprise, we don't have any containers on our right, but the docks where the ships anchor.

"You actually got it right…" she says incredulously. "Did you ask for directions?"

"Yes," I say. "When I stopped to get gas. I had to stop like, two or three times!"

"Well. I guess you're the first man I've ever met who's done that," she says, snorting. I just stay quiet, sure that whatever is going to happen will happen right now.

**Now that I think about it, I wonder why I never got pulled over because of all of the bullet holes in the back of the Elise, or the fact that I didn't have a license. Maybe Jerry had something to do with it, I don't know.**

She gets out of the car. She looks around to see if anything was weird and waved for me to come out. I step out of the Elise slowly, and walk to her as quickly as I can. She starts walking towards one of the boats and I follow, using her as a shield in case anything bad happens.

**Haha… Keitaro is a scare-d-cat… but you don't know what it's like having people on motorcycles breathing down you neck with Uzi semi-automatics and a girl that just kidnapped you for no more apparent reason than the fact that you just happened to be in the right place in the wrong time. I'd love to see you try!**

I thought that after the whole chase with the motorcycle guys, that I could take anything else, I found out in the next minute that I was so wrong.

"Oh my God!" Iva says as we walk up to an unmarked truck.

"What happened?" I ask, trying to keep up with her.

"All these men," she says, pointing inside the truck. "They're all dead!"

Just as I was about to cry like a little girly, some nutcase decided to shoot at us. I soon realized that he wasn't just a nutcase; he was part of the team that was after Iva, and now me! Iva dodges for cover behind the truck and I follow her to safety. She returns fire and manages to nail the first guy, but her shooting just attracts attention. Now all the badguys are shooting at the truck we're hiding under and we hope that it can keep us alive long enough for…

_Long enough for what?_ I realize. Who would come and save us? Weren't these the people that were supposed to get us to safety?

**As it turns out, I was right. Those men were supposed to pick us up and stow us in a ship to send us to team base. But there was no one else coming to save us. Our only choice was to fight or die, and I definitely couldn't fight.**

Iva's gun clicks when she pulls the trigger again.

"Oh frag!" she says, and scurries back under the truck to reload. I quiver in fear and hope it will all end soon. I hear something chink nearby and look to the side Iva can't see. To my horror I realize that it's a grenade. I tell Iva what I found and Iva scurries out her side where they had a trap waiting. When Iva squirms out, they don't shoot. While I squirm out, Iva looks for cover, they opened fire on us. Iva's running towards the ships and is quickly getting out of their firing range. Of course, I follow, but I run even faster when I realize that one of them shot a rocket at her. I sprint with all my might and tackle her, bringing her down and sending us rolling, since I latch onto her with both arms. The rocket hits the ground facing my back and sends us hurtling towards the ocean. As we sink to the briny deep, I can see bullets whizzing by us, making lines of bubbles in their wake.

Everything gets hazy.

**The last thing I remember is how warm Iva felt against the cold ocean. The next thing I knew, my lungs were on fire and my whole front felt burnt.**

"One, two, three!" I hear someone's voice say. When they get to three, I feel something on my lips that is very warm and soothing. But just as I get to appreciate the feeling, it goes away, and the counting starts again.

"One, two, three!" Again, the lips caress mine and then they leave again. I suddenly feel like throwing up, and warm liquid oozes out of my mouth. My body instantly pushes the rest of the liquid away, and I am left coughing my insides out. Only after the coughing gets less severe, do I realize that I am on someone's lap. I'm too busy right now to really care much, but I am curious as to how I'm still alive, and with who.

"Come on, at a boy," the voice says, and I can feel something pounding my back. After a while, the liquid refuses to come out and I just lay down where I am, trying to recover from the whole ordeal.

"You're amazing…" the voice says quietly, but I go on ignoring it. After a while, I fall asleep. The next time I wake up, my skin doesn't feel like its burning, and I feel like something itchy is covering me. I open my eyes and try to get up, but my body refuses to do so. Instead, I just look up and stare at the sky.

It was nighttime, and the stars were blazing in their full glory. They were actually a whole lot brighter than when I look at them from the Hinata-sou, so I think that wherever I am, it's not too close to the prefecture. _Am I glad I sent out that postcard, or I'd really be in trouble right now!_ I think, imagining Naru and the gang chasing after me like in Pararakerusu. I chuckle at the memory, but I end up grabbing someone else's attention.

"You're awake?" the voice says incredulously. Its owner is near the fire, so I can't see it very well. It comes closer until I can see it.

"Howdy stranger," I say, still a bit woozy from the lack of everything but vitamin D. Iva kneels next to me and gently caresses my face with her hand.

"Same to you…" she says slowly, studying my face meticulously for some reason.

"You know, I never got to properly introduce myself," I say as I try to raise my arm to shake hers. Instead, I feel an excruciating pain shoot up to my brain. As I writhe in agony, she shushes me and tries to soothe my pain.

**When I could sit up a few days later, she told me that when the RPG exploded behind me, it did a number on my spine. I shouldn't have survived the blast, but no only did I survive, I saved her life. Because of the rocket, I was basically a cripple. Everything that I needed, she took care of. We became… closer because of the experience. She knew almost every little thing about me, from the way I liked to eat, to the way I used the toilet. Yeah… that was awkward overtime. It was the first thing I re-learned to do by myself.**

It was another afternoon, but today was different. I could finally walk! And since I practiced all day, I managed to learn how to run a few hours ago. I've been making circles around the island ever since, and Iva was always sitting in the same spot, smiling and waving every time I passed by.

**It was a nice feeling. I would regret it for some time after.**

I was making another one of my rounds, but Iva isn't there this time. I start to panic, but I calm down when she comes out of the tree line carrying firewood. She waves to me again, and I smile at her. What just happened made me realize something.

**No matter how nice the island was, it was just an island. I wanted to go back home eventually; I had my whole life ahead of me. No doubt Iva was no different. But on that island, it was just Iva, me and the ocean as far as the eye could see… I loved the island. And I think Iva liked the island in the least. But it wasn't enough. Not three weeks after I woke up, we started talking about leaving.**

I was used to sleeping near Iva by now. The leaves we used for blankets weren't all that good compared to grade A body heat. But tonight was different. Iva was more intimate tonight. She was embracing me from the back, her soft bosom tingling the long since restored neural pathways that constitute my spine. She carelessly breathed down my neck, tingling the little hairs along it and causing wonderful sensations. She was bringing her charm to maximum power.

**She knew exactly what I was thinking.**

"Iva?"

"Mmhmm," she purrs.

"When we landed, do you know what islands we landed near?" I ask. She stays quiet for some time. "Iva?" I ask again, seeing if she fell asleep.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking Keitaro…" she says irritably.

"There's always ships going by, and we did start from a port," I say, trying to egg her along. She tries to pretend that she can't think of the answer, but from the way she tenses up, I know she's got it.

"Iva?" I say as sweetly as possible.

"But the island is so nice," she says in a last ditch effort to get me to stay. "It's just you and me. No one can hurt us here."

"But that's the problem, Iva!" I say after I turn around so that I can look her in the eye. "It's just us! I have my whole life set out for me. There are just too many people I'd be letting down if I stay here." I remember how Shinobu, Su and to an extent, Naru lean on me for support when times get tough, and all of the promises I've made down the line.

She is quiet for a while, but finally whispers, "At least you have someone waiting for you…"

She turns around, putting a little distance between us. I guess I must have upset her a lot. I guess I did sound a little selfish.

"Okinawa," she says. "We're near Okinawa…"

**Okinawa****! I still can't believe how stupid I was! Of course it was Okinawa! The weather was just too warm to be anywhere else!**

"Thanks…" I say, and turn over myself. Her arguments suddenly sound better than what I was originally planning.

**Like an idiot, I pretended that that night never happened. We lived together comfortably for some time, but I was pining for the Hinata-sou so much by now. I made a bon-fire and lit it when the ship traffic seemed to be at its peak, but nothing happened for a while. I kept the fire going for a while, and one the fourth day, an airplane flew by. I was sleeping, but I woke up to its engine and thrashed around wildly to get its attention. It wobbled a little to let me know that it saw me and headed out to port. A few hours later a ship was dispatched to rescue us.**

Iva wasn't talking to me since I started the whole bon-fire thing. She actually stayed on the other side of the island till the boat came. When we left the island, the look on her face scared me. It also reminded me of how we met in the first place: the barrel of a gun. After all the time we spent together, I had come to know her as a friend; maybe even bordering on that strange relationship Naru and I have! But I could never forget one thing- Iva was a killer and she had kidnapped me. I still didn't know who she worked for, and I still had to be "debriefed."

**She seems to have the ability to read peoples' minds. At least my mind.**

"When we get back, my organization will want to debrief you still…" she says with a bit of malice in her voice.

"I thought as much," I say, shaking my head. "How long do you think it will take to get it all done with?"

"It's really fast. It depends on how long it takes us to get to HQ"

"I don't suppose you'll tell me who's HQ we're going to…"

"Sorry Keitaro," she said with the warmth she used to have for me back in the island. "I really can't. You know too much as is."

**We didn't talk after that. I kept to my thoughts and wondered with dread what this debriefing business was all about. I wouldn't have to worry too much it turns out.**

When we land, two men wearing the same kind of suit as Jerry greets us.

**The reason we never tried Iva's communicator was that that and all of her stuff was lost in the explosion.**

Iva talks to them for a bit, and points to me. They nod and say something to her and gives her a box. She opens the box and takes things out. She puts various things in her pockets (they gave us new clothes to wear) and replaces her communicator and red necklace thingy. She beckons me over and I follow.

"We have to go to the international airport. Once we're there, a private jet will take us straight to HQ, and then it's all up to what Jerry thinks."

"So… who are we getting there?" I ask. Before she says anything, a car pulls up to us. It's my Elise!

**Well… the Elise I kinda stole…**

It was shiny and brand new looking. A suited man came out and gave Iva the keys. They nod and the man leaves with the two men that first met with us.

"You wanna drive?" she asks, knowing what I'll say.

"Do I!" I say enthusiastically. I try to calm down. Even after all that has happened to me, I still get excited every time I get to drive my own car.

**Even if it was stolen.**** But I paid for it… eventually…**

Since I didn't have a gun pointed at my head, I wasn't in any rush. And since there weren't any goons chasing me, I drove like normal. After I almost kill a bus full of children, Iva forces me to pull over and drives for the rest of the time.

**It was very peaceful. She turned on a light jazz station that kept us mellow the whole time. We passed through some farmland, and it almost seemed like we were a normal pair of people on a simple joyride.**

"We need to stop for gas again," she says, and pulls over to the nearest gas station. I man the pump while she goes to the building to pay and get some snacks. The pump takes a while to start, so I go inside and see what's taking so long. Just as I enter the building, I hear a loud explosion that knocks me off my feet. I get flung inside the store and crash into the glass windows of the cooler that has all the drinks inside. I heard something shatter, so I figure that the glass of the building also got destroyed. I hear more explosions and I suddenly remember something.

**Gas station + fire BAD**

"Keitaro, are you okay?" I hear Iva shout, trying to be heard over the roaring flames. Pocket explosions rock the whole station.

"We have to get out of here before the main tank blows!" she says after I nod. She supports my weight with her shoulder and helps me wobble out. The guy behind the register took a back door out and yelled at us to hurry before the whole place blew. Iva helped a lot and we were luckily able to get far enough away when the main tank blew.

**Have you seen one of those old WWII tapes where we got A-bombed by the Americans? Or a H-bomb test that some nations have been using recently? Well, it kinda looked and felt like that, though at a _much_ smaller scale.**

"What the hell happened!" Iva says in a rare display of unadulterated anger after the blast. We were huddled behind a hill as cover.

"I don't know. I was walking to the main building when the pump wouldn't work, and just as I got in, something exploded behind me.

**I would almost become very intimate with that something in say… three seconds.**

"What did you do!" the register guy says, pointing an accusing finger at me as if it were my fault. Before I can say anything, something _big_ almost falls on top of me. If I wasn't reaching forward to argue with him, my left arm would be one with the big smoking pile of whatever was next to me. When the thing registers in my head, I jump and huddle behind Iva for protection.

**I would also laugh about that too.**

Iva shrugs me off and approaches the burning thing. When she gets close, she says, "Keitaro, you are the luckiest man on the planet," she says.

**Ha! Ha! And Haha! Lucky. _Me?_ And here I thought she knew me a little bit. Lucky…**

"What are you talking about?" I ask as I approach the thing warily. I stay behind Iva and look over her shoulder.

"This is our car. Someone planted a really powerful bomb under it!"

**I always wondered why I never got injured every time Su blew me up. It turns out that her explosions are caused by gasses under extreme pressure. Real explosions use heat to make the gas expand, so it's more dangerous. (Not that Su's things aren't dangerous.)**

"What?" the register guy and I say at the same time. He has a fearful look on his face and runs away screaming.

"It must have been the guys who were after us," she thinks aloud.

"Those guys did that!" I scream, jumping away in horror.

**Guys chasing me down the highway with guns I could handle. Ambushes I could handle. Working with Seta gets you prepared for things like that. But I was not anywhere close to being ready to handle assassinations.**

"Why do they want us so bad?" I blurt out. I don't expect Iva to answer and she doesn't. Instead, she gazes at the burning remains of the gas station, her thoughts probably in some other place, some other time.

**Like with Naru, I would eventually learn what that gaze was for.**

When she comes back to the present, she says sadly, "We stopped them from doing something horrible. Now they want revenge…"

"Are you serious?" I say, not wanting to believe her. If its one thing people never give up on, its revenge.

**I would know, living in a dorm full of girls. (Shudder)**

"Yes," she says simply.

"So will they go after anyone that I know?" I say, when the magnitude of what she tells me starts to become clear.

"Only if you try to contact anyone," she says.

**I thought the world stood still as my heartbeat sped up.**

_I sent them that post card!_ kept replaying in my mind. When I became conscious again, I was on the ground, and Iva was shaking me.

"Keitaro! What's wrong?" she asks in a frightened voice. She looks very afraid and I remember that I was blasted by a bomb in the back.

**Again…**

I get back to my senses and tell her what I did. She becomes very fearful and asks me when I sent it. When I tell her it was when we were driving to the port, she relaxes a bit. She tells me that maybe they wouldn't have been following us since they were doing their ambush at the port. She relieves my mind a little, but I know I could never forgive myself if anything happens to the girls because of me.

"We have to get going," she says. "I can hear sirens and that gas station guy probably has the cops looking out for us."

"Okay," I say and get up. I can walk, thankfully, and we get as far away as we can.

**We actually didn't get too far away from the gas station when we reached a town. It was medium sized, so we could blend into the crowd and be able to leave in a hurry. We went to check into a motel for the night.**

**I think the clerk thought that we had just come out of a street fight or something, by the way he was looking at us.**

"Its 120 a night for an economy room with a double bed," he says. "Its 140 if you want two twins," he adds.

"Well take the one with the queen sized bed," Iva said, holding onto my arm like a lover would. Of course, I reel back, but her grip on me is rock solid, so I stay put.

"How are you paying?" the guy asks.

**They normally ask you stuff like that when you're checking out, but this guy didn't really trust us.**

"I'll need your first night's payment as a deposit," he says. He starts to annoy me, but Iva plays it cool.

"We need to make a withdrawal from the bank. Can you reserve the room for us till we come back?" Iva says sweetly.

"Yes Ma'am," the clerk says. We leave the motel and start walking the down the street.

"What was all that about the queens size bed," I say in alarm. I have horrible memories of that time Motoko left and Su decided to 'hang around' with me.

**Shudder…**

"We can't be Keitaro and Iva here, or we'll get caught. We have to act like something we're not, like a married couple," she explains.

"Or lovers," I say hotly.

**Strike one.**

She opens her mouth as if to say something, but says, "Yeah. Remember, we're just here to get to the airport. If we don't get there on time, Jerry will send out a search party."

"Why haven't we contacted Jerry? We could just tell him where we are, couldn't we?"

"No we can't," she says. "If we break radio silence, the people after us will know where we are."

**She lied. But she would save our lives because of it.**

"Okay," I say, having nothing better to say. "So, how about money? I don't have enough in my wallet to let us stay there for too long."

She grins. "Follow me," she says, dragging me by the arm. We walk into a bank that was closed. The front doors are open so that people can use the ATM's and she walks up to one of them. She taps a few keys on her communicator and a thin metallic credit card-sized thing came out that had a wire attaching it to the computer.

"What are you doing?" I ask nervously, checking around to make sure that no one is watching.

"I'm gonna hack this ATM," she says matter-of-factly, and does it. Moments later, the ATM starts spewing out loads of paper currency. It's enough to put my life savings to shame!

"What are we gonna do with all of this!" I say in alarm. No doubt, the bank will report a robbery the next day and the clerk just might rat us out.

"Clothes, food and rent," she says. "It really isn't much. Besides, I'm having all of this wired from HQ."

"Good," I say, a bit relieved. At least we won't have to worry about being arrested.

**After we stashed our loot in a backpack we bought, we went to a store that was open late to buy "emergency" clothing. She spent almost half an hour trying to decide which high heels she wanted! It got pretty late by the time we checked into our apartment.**

As I slip into my side of the bed, I clamp my eyes shut. I wish I had some kind of thing to strap me in place, like in Kyoto, but I have no such luck.

**I don't really know why I panicked so much. I did sleep really close to her back on the island, but I guess being back in civilization just made me go back to my older self. But then I was crippled, so I guess I was kind of constrained. But the fact remained that I was sleeping in the same bed with someone of the opposite sex, something my body just kept on reminding me of.**

After she comes out of the bathroom with a new outfit, she turns off the lights and takes her place. After a while, she whispers, "You can move away from the edge. There's plenty of room here."

"Its okay!" I say, trying not to yelp. She goes under the covers and I realize that it's the same one as the one I'm using. I get out of them very quickly and give them all to her.

"What are you squirming around so much for, Keitaro?" she asks. After a few moments of thinking, she says, "Can it be that you've never slept in the same bed as another woman?"

**Bulls eye…**

"N-No! I just got hot suddenly," I lie.

**But it ends up becoming the truth, because I do start feeling hot.**

"Really?" she says.

"Uh-huh," I say, hoping this conversation will end well.

"Then you should be fine with this," she says. I hear shuffling and suddenly she's pressing her front against my back.

**I ended up fainting from blood loss later that night.**

"W-what are you doing!" I yell and fall off the bed and on my back. I look up and see her head looking down at me from the side.

"I thought so…" she says evilly.

"What are you talking about?" I say with frustration. All I want to do is go to sleep.

**If I just slept on the floor, I wouldn't have had to go through the headache that ensued…**

"You're still a virgin!" she says, laughing.

"No I'm not!" I lie.

**Strike two.**

She lies on her belly and rests her head on her hands. She looks at me with a raised eyebrow and says, "If you aren't a virgin, prove it."

I freeze. (The anime equivalent would be turning to stone)

**So, you ask, how does one go about proving their innocence from the crime known as virginity?**

"Up here big boy," she says, patting the bed.

**The doctors would one day tell me that I have an abnormal amount of blood flowing through my nose.**

I nose bleed at what I think she has in mind. My body knows exactly what to do and slowly puts itself on the bed next to her. When she puts my hand on her… chest, I snap back to reality.

"Kyaa!" I scream and reel back. I jump back to the floor and roll from side to side saying, "It was an accident! I swear!"

Iva just laughs at me until I calm down. I stand up, ashamed and bewildered that she knows one of my dark little secrets and move to the sofa. When I lie down on it, Iva says, "I was just kidding, Keitaro. Being a virgin isn't that bad."

**And the Oscar goes to…**

"Yeah, you're right," I agree, and move to go back to the bed. "I'm only 22."

She bursts out laughing.

**When she stopped giggling and I could finally go to sleep, I had this horrible nightmare about this giant bug that was chasing me through a forest.**

When I finally wake up, I feel very hot. I open my eyes and see white. A hear a beeping nearby and turn to see it. I'm surprised to see that the noise is coming from a machine that keeps track of a patient's vitals.

**It dawned upon me that I was the patient.**

I feel something on my left hand, and find that Iva is holding it. She's awake, but staring at the floor. "Iva," I whisper, "what's going on?"

She snaps her head up, letting fly a tear or two and stares at me. Her hold becomes firmer and she says, "Keitaro, you're awake!"

When I nod, she lunges forward and holds me in a fierce hug.

"I- we thought we lost you!" she says between sobs.

"What happened?" I say, utterly confused.

**I didn't remember getting shot at or blown up the last time I was awake.**

She looked at me sarcastically. "You had a tick the size of a cherry on your leg! How did you miss that?"

"Tick!" I repeat, and remember my nightmare.

"It stuck on you when we were at the island. It passed on some unknown virus to you, so the doctors couldn't help you. You're lucky that your body could stand up to it!" she says, already brought down to tears.

"I'm sorry," I say sheepishly. She holds onto my hand a bit tighter, staring at my eyes.

**I remember how vulnerable she looked. Like a child finding out that her father was visiting somewhere far away without her.**

Even when she's worried, she has this aura of beauty that's just so surreal. Her emerald pools hold a sparkle in them that reflects her energy and spirit. I get lost in them for a while, until she moves forward and brings me back to my senses. She moves her body so her face is inches from mine, and I can't help but stare at her dark pink lips. When I think she is about to kiss me, she moves her head so that she can whisper to me.

"They know where we are. We have to move tonight, before the hospital checks us out tomorrow morning so they can't follow us."

My throat runs dry. After all the stuff we have been through, I still forget that they are after our lives.

**I still can't believe she never told me who "they" were yet. It was driving me crazy.**

We make idle talk for a while, but I can't shake the fear of people that I don't even know wanting to kill me. By sunset, we leave the hospital, wearing the uniforms of two doctors that we ambushed. We left them in a room near mine so that someone could free them after we escaped.

"Where do we go now?" I ask, after we get new street clothes.

"We have to try to get to the airport. It doesn't matter the Jerry probably sent out a search team for us by now."

"Why don't we just go to them?" I wonder out loud.

"We can't!" she exclaims. "It's too dangerous to try anything foolish like that."

"Okay," I reply, a bit taken back by her outburst. We go to the bus station and get tickets to go to the train station. From there, we take an express train all the way to the airport we were supposed to arrive at.

**I've been to airports before, but I was still dazzled every time I saw one of those monsters take to the sky.**

"So, where are we meeting your friends?" I ask as we enter the main terminal. It is teeming with people and there was barely any room to move.

"We're not," she says coolly and starts walking. She seems to know the place very well, since she just keeps on walking without bothering to check where we are headed. After a while, we reach a door that says "Employees Only."

"Iva?" I ask.

"Cover me," she says and starts hacking the door's electronic lock with her communicator. I scramble to keep things private. A few moments later, the lock opens and she pulls me into the room with her.

**Inside, we found a locker room. She broke the locks off of a bunch until we both had uniforms to wear. I decided that I wouldn't try and piss her off anytime soon, because she broke those metal locks with her _bare hands_! That was why I didn't bother her about why we were breaking and entering.**

She types something into her communicator, and two cards magically come out. She gives me one and I read what it says on it. It's an ID card that the employees of the airport have so that they can move around easily. I put it on and we go back to the main terminal. We walk some more until we reach one of the gates. We go to the tarmac and make out way to one of the hangars. Inside, we find a Leer jet fueled and ready to go.

**Without even hesitating, Iva went into it. I stood outside like a nervous wreck, paralyzed by the fear that we would get caught. She grabbed my arm with a vice like grip and forced me inside, while I struggled with all of my might to just run away and hide.**

After she closes the door, I sit in the co-pilot's seat, nervously waiting for the police to come and arrest us. But Iva is very calm and hacks into the plane's computer with her communicator. She does some stuff, and eventually, the radio crackles to life.

I was scared to death that the authorities will catch us and tell us to surrender, but it turns out to be the Tower. "Leer 157, you are clear for launch. Proceed to runway B," the radioman says.

I gave a big sigh of relief while Iva just smiles. So far, everything is running smoothly. When we reach the runway, however, the Tower tells us to stop. I almost have a heart attack, but they say that there is an airplane that has to make an emergency take-off and needs to cut the line. Iva acknowledges and a Cessna takes off a few minutes later.

When it is finally our turn to go, we leave quietly, or as quietly as jet propulsion will let us go. The ride is even calmer, since the airplane is on autopilot. I keep checking the radar, though, since I am sure that someone is going to try and shoot us down.

"Keitaro?" Iva asks me some time in the flight. I look up from the radar and find her looking at me intently.

"Yeah?"

"Who's Naru?" she asks, and suddenly finds the compass interesting. I wonder how I should respond to her.

"She's this girl," I say, still trying to sort through my thoughts.

**Strike three! And you're out!**

**I don't notice, but she tenses up.**

_I like her, but I don't really know if she like me… Wasn't she in love with Seta-sempai?_

"We study together," I finally say. She turns her gaze towards me, a cute smile on her face.

**I should have seen this coming…**

"So, you 'study' with her…" she says, teasing me. "How many times a day do you and Naru 'study?' "

Realizing what she means, I blush and say, "It's not like that!" I frantically wave my arms to erase the scene popping in my head where Naru and I "study." Iva starts laughing at me.

"-ou copy?" the radio says, crackling to life again.

"This is Leer 157. Repeat please?" Iva replies.

"Your course is 50 miles wast of your itinerary from the Japanese Tower. I repeat, you have deviated into Chinese airspace."

"Sorry, Chinese Tower," she says, her fingers flying through the Leer jet's controls. "I am making corrections."

"See that you do; this was a warning. Next time you will be shot." The radio stays silent after that.

"Stupid Chinese," Iva mutters. "Always expanding their borders without asking anyone."

"Why would we be flying near China?" I say in shock.

"Because it's the fastest way to HQ," she says matter-of-factly.

"And where is HQ?" I ask.

"In the Rodina," she says, saying the word with a strange accent.

**It was the motherland- Russia.**

"What?" I say in shock. "I thought you worked for us Japanese!" I suddenly find myself even more afraid of her then ever.

"Wait, Keitaro," she says as a try to leave the cockpit. I run down the aisle, conveniently forgetting that this plane is not much longer than a school bus. But she catches up to me and tackles me to the ground.

**In hindsight, she probably did that to keep me from doing anything stupid. On a side note, it turns out that the airplane we stole was a private jet of some hot-shot sports player. By causing him to get delayed to where he was heading, his publicist wouldn't have been able to catch up to him and score him a even better deal that would have expired if he had to go all the way to where ever the sports guy was headed.**

"Let me go," I say, squirming under her. I may weigh more than her, but she is much stronger than I am.

"No," she says, holding onto me tighter. "First calm down." I squirm and struggle under her grasp, but to no avail. Eventually, I give up and quietly lay down under her, staring at floor.

"What are you gonna do to me?" I finally say. Now that I finally think I know what she's up to, I prepare for the worst.

"I'm going to protect you," she says with a strained voice. Her hold loosens, but I can feel wetness behind me. "I will protect you with my life. I won't lose you like I lost him…"

**Um…**** I kinda had no clue as to what was going on at this point.**

"Lose me?" I say, taken by surprise. "What are you talking about? Tell me what's going on!" when she doesn't reply, I try to turn around, but she tightens her grip.

"When I first met you, my little brother had just died," she says quietly.

**What did this have to do with protecting me?**

"Keitaro, I need you to trust me. There is just too much that you don't know yet," she says.

**Thinking back to how she did save my life a couple of times, even though I got mixed up into this because of her, I decided that I should trust her. I mean, it wasn't like _she_ was trying to kill me. But I still didn't like the idea of going on Russian soil.**

"Okay, Iva," I finally say. "I'm going to trust you." When my muscles slacken, she completely lets go of me. She gets up and helps me up. We move to sit in the passenger cabin, but something in the cockpit started beeping, bringing our attention up front. We went back to the cockpit to see what was causing it.

"We're ready for our landing approach," Iva says after looking through the instrument panel. We both strap ourselves in as Iva gracefully cuts through the thick clouds that hid the vast land beneath us. Before we clear the clouds, however, Iva warns me, "Now, don't be afraid that we're about to land in a sea. Its actually active camouflage that we use to hide HQ."

"Sea?" I question when I can see the ground below us. "I don't see any sea; I just see that really big bonfire."

"Bonfire?" she asks in surprise. She looks from the instrument panel to where I'm pointing and screams!

"Iva, what's going on!" I ask in alarm.

"HQ is under attack!" she explains. Even though she is excited, she is experienced enough to keep the plane steady and predictable.

"Shouldn't we go somewhere else if your HQ is under attack?" I say. "Preferably somewhere away from here?"

"No, I have to go there. We don't know if I'm too late yet or not."

I can't change her mind, so I just sit tight and hope we don't get killed.

**For a second though, I almost think we will because a rocket flies straight toward us from the smoldering inferno, but luckily, it explodes a few seconds before it hits us. The only damage it causes is that the debris peppers the sheet metal of the jet's nose and belly. It was a miracle nothing went into the turbine and killed us.**

Even with all the carnage going on, there was a lighted runway visible to us. As Iva expertly landed the aircraft, I got a good look at her HQ. It looked like a giant glass pyramid. Surrounding it were large concentric ring-like buildings that were connected by shafts every 90 degrees. There were three of the rings and at the outer ring where the shafts extended past, there was a large skyscraper, easily twice the height of the pyramid. It must have look really sweet normally, but right now the pyramid part was ablaze. Almost all of the peripheral buildings had no lights, so I guessed that they had lost power.

Iva doesn't even bother to park the Leer jet in any of the hangers that line the runway. She just stops the plane and drags me out with her. She does go to a hanger, but only to take one of the cars that are parked inside. As we drive to the main structure, I as amazed as to how deserted the place seems. Instead of stopping in front of the closest skyscraper like I thought she would have, Iva just plows right in and keeps on driving. I am amazed at how skillfully she manages to drive in the confined passageways of the skyscraper's lobby. I notice that there are red lights flashing, a loud annoying buzz accompanying it. I ask Iva about it and she tells me that it is a red alert and that all non-combatants should have left by now, which explains why everything is deserted. She weaves this way and that, with the skill of someone who is familiar with the terrain. Moments later, we stop in front of what looks like a train station. It turns out that the shafts that connect the rings, skyscrapers and the pyramid are actually lines for a train system that makes it easy to move from one building to the next quickly.

I am about to ask what we are going to do next, but Iva just peels onto the tracks. I almost wet myself when an oncoming train almost runs us over, but Iva's sharp reflexes save us. I glance at the train and have to blink. I'm not sure what I am seeing, but I think it was some scary looking robots! The train suddenly halts and reverses. It tries to follow us, but Iva is too quick. Five near-misses later, we get off at the pyramid's station.

"Follow me," Iva says quietly, "And don't make a noise unless you want to get us killed."

I get hurt by how she talks to me, but I can understand why she is talking like that. Her home is being attacked and she doesn't want me to get hurt in the crossfire. I know I would be the same if the Hinata-sou was being attacked. But I doubt I would have to worry about people with guns and rockets trying to break into my dorm!

She sneaks up to the exit and carefully peers around the corner. I can't see what she can, but she visibly relaxes. She tells me to come with her and I follow. We carefully walk to wherever she had in mind and a million gunshots and five explosions later, she opens a door to a room.

"Stay in here," she says, shoving me in after her. "You'll be safe. And don't come out for anything save a nuclear self destruct," she says seriously. I only shudder at why she would say the last thing. She swipes her card on the access panel of a room inside the room we're in and the door opens.

"Please, Keitaro. Promise me that you won't come out unless I tell you to," she says, pleading with me.

"Okay," I say, starting to worry.

"_Promise_ me," she emphasized.

Keeping in mind the seriousness of this oath, I said, "I promise."

She smiles at me with a sad look as the door closes. It felt so much like farewell.

**I stayed in there for so long. I was starting to get edgy. Once or twice I was tempted to just open the door and run away, but my promise kept me from doing that. The only thing that accompanied me while I was in the dimly lighted room was the sounds of gunshots, explosions and buildings crumbling. Some of the carnage seemed very close and I felt the room shake every now and then. But everything turned deadly when the lights turned out.**

I start to panic and feel for the door. Instead, I trip and land face first. As I get up, I hear the external door open. Afraid that the bad guys had found me, I reach for the closest thing I can grab and hope to God that I'm pointing the right way. The door opens, letting loose a thick cloud of smoke and dust. I wanted to just smack whoever came in, but I start coughing instead, since my lungs feel like they are on fire.

"Keitaro!" I hear a voice say through the cacophony that has flooded into the room. It sounds like there was a tornado blowing in the corridor. A beam of light pierces through the thick smoke and a hand hold mine in a gentle grasp. I get up, using my sleeve to filter out the air so I can breathe it. The person who helped me up tears my arm away from my face and shoves something to my mouth. I desperately try to get it off me, but stop when I realize that fresh air is coming out of it. I take a deep breath.

My vision gets a little better and I realize that there is someone clad in battle armor standing in front of me. The person hand me an airtight helmet and I wear it. The person attaches the air tube of what was giving me fresh air into a port on the helmet's back. It turns out that my air supply came from a battle armor that looked just like my savior's. It's a hard shell that has a hump on the back and only covers my torso. He has everything covered, from head to toe. I gladly put it on. The person pushes something on my helmet and a radio crackles to life.

"Agent Iva wanted us to retrieve you before this sector got demolished," the person in front of me said through the comm. "Do you know how to use this?" he asked, handing me a high tech looking assault rifle.

"No!" I said, appalled. I never want to use a gun ever in my life.

"Then just hang back and try not to get shot," he says and moves out. There are three other people there and they take positions around me. When we stop at a corner, the lead guy turns back and says, "Sorry I forgot about this." He taps something else on my helmet and everything suddenly turns white!

But it fades to green and suddenly I can see the world in green, but without the smoke!

"Terahertz scanning," the guy says simply. "It's like x-rays but without the radiation."

We continue moving forward without incident for most of the way to the next sector. At a certain point, I hear a very loud explosion and a storm of dust floods from behind us, probably caused by the demolition he was talking about. The next corner we take seems to be the same as the others, but a wall of bullets comes our way when the lead guy peers around it. His faceplate was strong enough to withstand the bullets that went his way for the nanosecond he was looking and is now sitting against the wall as he caught his breath.

They didn't wait for long, because the sound of bullets flying erupts from somewhere else. They are actually aimed at whatever had shot at our lead, and when our assailant turns its gun to its new shooters, the four guys went down the corridor with guns blazing. I hear AR's and chain guns firing like mad but it all stops with the sound of a muffled explosion. I think that either the guys who were with me are dead or that whatever was shooting at us is dead, but my curiosity overcomes my fear. I peer around the corner and see the four guys standing proudly on top of a pile of smoking metal. I walk up to them and realize that the smoking metal was actually the carcass of one of those robots I saw back on the trains.

"Target has been neutralized, sir!" the lead guy says, saluting to another person that was coming from an adjacent corridor. The person is flanked by ten other people in full body armor.

"Thanks a lot Major," the comm. says. The person takes her helmet off and reveals none other than Iva. I had never been so relieved to see anyone in my life.

Well, after my first Naru punch at least…

"That bastard had us pinned down just after you left," she continues and pats him on the back. She turns to me and probably recognized who I am because of the parts of my clothing that isn't covered by the armor.

"I'm so glad you didn't get killed," Iva says, coming up to give me a hug. "I was really worried. I tried to shake her off, not really comfortable with the intimacy right now. She gets my drift, but doesn't seem mad about it.

"Okay guys, the good news is that chain of command has been restored," she says, addressing everyone. All the guys cheer. "The bad news is that our orders are to activate the experimental EMP on the next level. Then the security drones will be disabled and we can hunt down the terrorists."

"But sir," one of the guys says. "Won't that cut us all off and destroy the pyramid's tech?"

"Its better it destroyed than us," she says curtly. She puts her helmet on and says, "Move out!" The guy who was leading my rescue squad led our much larger group. Iva stuck close to me in the middle.

We met another one of the security drones just as we were about to get into the lab sector. The way they worked was that they had a tracked base, like a tank. Their torsos fold down when they aren't attacking anything and they are about half my height. This one unfolds to its full height and its gun pods opens up from the sides, making it look like a human with chain guns for forearms. (Imagine those USAF robots from T3)

Unfortunately for it, the corridor is too narrow, so that when it opens up on us, its guns tear through its innards, rendering it dead. Though it is no longer functional, it still proves to be an obstacle since it is blocking the only path to the lab sector. With much strain, we finally push it out of the way and go inside.

The lab sector is nothing short of amazing. There is stuff here, that if Su sees it, she will think that she had died and gone to heaven. She would probably quit eating bananas just to get her hands on one of these gadgets. The coolest one I see is this small metal ball that is contained in a glass cylinder filled with some clear liquid. The metal ball shrinks until it disappears, and grows back from nothing in some other place in the cylinder. It does it very quickly and moves from one place to another like stars twinkling in the night sky.

We move from room to room, each being more amazing than the last. The room that we're in right now seems so out of place. It is a huge greenhouse full of strange and exotic plants and animals. I look at a flower from one plant and before I know it, I am walking to it. Even as its tendrils slowly squeeze me to death, all I can look at is its flowers. Iva is the first to notice this and shoots the flowers, bringing me back to my senses. I struggle to get out of the plants grasp and it actually lets me go. Its tendrils pick up the pieces of its ravaged blossoms and actually start putting them back!

"It's a Noluke plant," Iva says. "If you look at its flowers for too long, it will hypnotize and eat you."

"Why the hell would someone have one of those!" I say, exasperated.

"This is the research lab. Everything in here is a potential weapon," she radios, still sounding cool.

"You guys are nuts!" I reply, and keep to myself till we leave the greenhouse from hell. I stick as close as I dare to Iva, keeping a wary eye on anything that moves. There was a strange monkey looking thing with bat-like wings and claws. It hovered nearby us the whole time, following us like a shadow. It didn't do anything to us, so no one shot it down. By the time we left the insane green house, I had seen enough bio-weapons to make me a vegetarian.

I was very happy to get out of the hot, steamy green house and even happier after the door shut behind us. The red warning lights are still buzzing, reminding me that we aren't likely to see any friendlies.

"How much farther?" I ask. We were in a corridor this time, so I had a glimmer of hope that maybe this nightmare would end soon.

"Down that corridor is our objective," she says to me with a bit of anticipation. "Then we can get the bastards that attacked us.

"You mean, this isn't all we have to do?" I say, disappointed and terrified. I have yet to use my gun and I really don't want to. I doubt it would do any good even if I did!

Iva doesn't answer me this time. Instead, she holds her hand up and we stop moving. She makes a few "Uh-huh"s and then says, "Okay boys, change of plans. Everyone but Tom, Hans, Keitaro and I will proceed as planned. Tom, Hans, Keitaro and I will go the other way and save Jerry. It turns out that the bastards have him holed up somewhere nearby."

The team acknowledges and follows her orders. Like last time, Iva and I stay in the middle and the other two cover either end. We go into every door that we come across but we don't find Jerry. We are fortunate, though, that we didn't find anything else, because it would probably be liable to get us killed!

We open the door for a room marked 12:51. The lead man stands in front with his gun pointing inside while the Iva opens it. The other guy is behind the lead man and he goes in first and uses the door for cover. He looks around and signals that the part of the room that he can see is clear. The lead man then goes past the safety of the door.

Bullets start spraying at him and he drops dead. The guy at the door leaps behind a desk to take cover while Iva covers him. I stay behind, praying that Iva and the other guy don't get killed also and that it will all be over soon. The loud popping noises of the guns barking finally stop. I peer in and see that Iva has her back against a wall and that the other guy has his head turned at an impossible angle. I take off my helmet, no longer able to stand the sights of blood and gore that the Terahertz scanner shows through the thick smoke as clear as day, but put it back on when I smell the stench. I remember that there was a button to turn off the scanner and tap the helmet where the now dead lead guy pushed it. I walk up to Iva and check if she's okay.

"Iva, are you alright?" I say, kneeling in front of her.

"Yeah, just catching my breath," she says, breathing heavily. "Go free Jerry," she says, pointing at the man sitting calmly on a chair. I say "Okay" and do what she told me. I walk up to Jerry but I feel something amiss.

**The world suddenly went to slow motion. Jerry started getting up from the chair, and I saw a gun in his hand. My hands moved on their own and my gun was pointed at his heart. Before I could stop myself, I pulled the trigger. His shoulder exploded and he went down.**

I drop my gun, mortified at the feral thing I had just done. _I just shot someone!_ I scream to myself. I hands become very shaky and I fall to my knees.

"Oh my God, Oh my God…" I say, repeating the phrase over and over. I don't want to see it, but my eyes keep on switching from the big hole on Jerry's shoulder to the bare skin of the hands that did the unthinkable.

"Keitaro!" I hear Iva say from behind me. She shakes my shoulder to bring me out of my shock. When I don't move, she says "Keitaro!" again, but louder. I slowly turn my head and look at her. She seems so much stronger than me from my point of view. Even if I were standing, she would still look strong.

"Iva!" I cry, turning back so that I can hold onto her for comfort. I don't really care that I'm holding onto her waist; all that I can think is that I just killed a man.

"Keitaro," she said, leaning forward to envelope me in an embrace. "Calm down, Keitaro."

"But I just killed a man!" I say, and start crying. _Why did I do it? He never even pulled the gun on me._

"No, Keitaro, it wasn't your fault," she said, trying to reassure me.

"Yes it is! I shot him!" I argue between my sobs. She lets go of me and slides down so that our faceplates touch.

"Keitaro," she says, looking me in the eye. "You didn't kill him, I did," she says.

"What are you talking about," I say. "Just look at him!" I say, pointing at the fallen Russian.

"Keitaro, you had your safety on," she says. She holds my gun up and shows me its display. On the ammo module, it says 125/125. As my guilt subsides, I'm still hit by another dark feeling.

"But he's dead," I say. "They're all dead!"

"They're dead," Iva says, waving at her fallen comrades. "But they died doing their duty. But him," she says, pointing at Jerry, "He's still alive. He just has a flesh wound."

"What?" I say, and look at the fallen one. True to her word, Jerry was alive. And he was crawling to his gun.

"Oh no you don't!" Iva says and shoots his gun out of reach. "I can't believe you turned traitor, Jerry."

"Traitor?" Jerry says, as it was a foreign concept. "Why, whatever do you mean?"

"It was you, wasn't it? The ambush. The car bomb. That was all your doing!"

"My, my, my… what a clever little one," Jerry says. "When did you figure it all out?"

"While Keitaro was sick at the hospital I had my suspicions. I did some research just to be sure and I was horrified to find out that I was right. If I had contacted you when we were getting our hotel, we would have washed up dead on some island shore the next morning!" Iva says. Jerry frowns through his faceplate.

"I suppose it was you who gave HQ that warning about my attack then…" he says.

"Yes," Iva says smugly. "And now you're going to pay!" Before I can do anything, she shoots three times. Horrified, I run up to her and pull her gun away.

"Iva! What are you doing!" I say.

"Let go Keitaro, before you hurt yourself!"

"You just shot a defenseless man!" I say.

"I was just immobilizing him," she says, pointing at his new wound. He had a bullet in his other shoulder and on each thigh. "They're just flesh wounds; nothing the nanomeds can't fix," she says. I calm down a bit and let her go. She goes up to him and gives him a kick.

"I'll deal with you later," she says and sits in his chair. It was in front of a console that Iva hacks into with her communicator. Moments later, she has a look of satisfaction and gets up. She talks on her radio.

"Bravo team, what's your status with the EMP?" she says.

"We're just about finished charging it. It will be ready in five minutes," their squad leader replies.

"Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission. Security drones are no longer compromised," she says.

" 'Scuse me sir?" he asks.

"I have taken control of the station the enemy used to take over our network. The security drones are ours now."

"That's great news sir," the leader says, genuinely grateful.

"Meet me in front of the shaft in five minutes. I'd imagine that we'll be needed at the core right about now."

"Yes sir!" he says and cuts off. Iva relays the same message to her commanders and is met with expressions of gratitude.

**It turned out that the enemy was working in sync with the security drones, so when Iva made them switch side again, the enemy was taken completely by surprise. There were a few pockets of resistance left, but they were quickly dealt with. Iva and I were summoned to meet with her superiors in the core of the facility.**

We carefully get out of the shaft train, wary that something may break at any moment. Iva walks at a brisk pace while I do my best to follow. She leads us out the exit and down a corridor that leads to a large door. She slides a card down the access panel. Instead of opening the door, something pops out of a hidden recess on the same side of the door. Iva bends down so that it can scan her eye. When it is through, a digitized voice says "Access granted. Welcome back agent."

I stick to Iva like a fly to candy after that; the room the door opened up to is easily large enough to fit the Hinata-sou and I don't want to get lost. It is like a blown up version of a hive. People are jostling about, each seeming to have an important task to accomplish. The vast expanse is filled with a giant web of catwalks. There are computer workstations everywhere and giant projection displays cover every inch of the top half of every wall, relaying vast amounts of data to everyone in the room. But the most amazing thing is the center piece. Suspended by wires that seemed to be too frail to handle its weight, is a gigantic transparent sphere. There are guns of some sort pointing at it from all directions and they summed up to make a 3d image of what appears to be the pyramid we are in. The image was more of a structural diagram that shows the status of every compartment, room and corridor of the gigantic facility. Most of the space is in red, denoting places that are crippled from the fighting. The colors went from red to blue, which means that the place was relatively unharmed. But there are large chunks of the pyramid missing, probably the parts that were completely demolished.

Not really paying any attention to the chaos that surrounds us, Iva walks to the center of the room. She walks into a room that happens to be placed just under the sphere and makes me think of a house under a giant sun. She salutes with military precision to the people inside while I cower behind her. The men and women in here are _scary…_

"Field Op agent Iva reporting as ordered, sirs!" she says in English in mid salute. Everyone inside continues what they are doing, all ignoring her except one.

"Where is the civilian?" a tired sounding man says. His accent has a hint of British in it.

"H-here…" I say, waving my hand after standing next to Iva. I stare at the floor because the looks they give me makes me feel guilty.

**Kind of like back in the Hinata-sou, now that I think about it…**

"We would like to congratulate you for the warning you sent us," the same man says.

"Thank you, President William," Iva says.

"It is we that should thank you," President William says. "If it weren't for you, we'd be in commi territory right now."

"Sorry to be blunt, sir, but what about Keitaro? What is going to happen to him?"

"I'm sorry to say that he must still be debriefed. The fact that he knows about the existence of this facility is enough to terminate him, but I am making a special concession in light of your work."

"Would it be okay if we took him in as an agent?" she pleads, breaking her form.

"He's too old for training. And he just seems cowardly to me, if you want my humble opinion…"

"I think you would change your mind after going through this," Iva says, and hand her communicator over. The LCD display pops us and plays some video to the President. After a few moments of watching, the President turns off the communicator.

"Report back when we are done. This needs some serious consideration," the President says. "Dismissed"

"Thank you, sir!" Iva says and walks out of the room crisply. I follow her out and then the questions come.

"Why did you volunteer me to be an agent! I can't do anything… I can't even shoot a person!" I say. I shiver even though the room we're in is hot with all the breathing.

"Count yourself lucky that you never killed anyone," Iva said with a distant voice. "And you can do something- you have an amazing healing ability. And being an agent is the only way to avoid debriefing."

"What's so bad about debriefing? What is it anyway?"

"It's a process that makes you forget everything for a set amount of time. You have false memories planted in the old memories place so that you don't get suspicious."

"That doesn't sound so bad…"

"There's a 24 survival rate. There have been three people who we did this to so far. All of them died."

"Maybe ill be the lucky one?"

"Keitaro," Iva says, turning so I can see the seriousness in her eyes. "They were the only people to go. Even though statistically you would probably survive, what if you're the last percent? I won't lose you, not after all we have been through…" I stay quiet, but I don't let it go.

"Why do it then, if it doesn't work?"

"It's because it gets the job done. If you die, you can't tell anyone what you saw. If you survive, you won't remember anything. Either way, it's a win-win situation."

"For you guys at least…" I say sarcastically.

"I'm sorry Keitaro, but these are your choices," she says, looking at me with sad puppy eyes. "And being an agent isn't so bad. Take me for example!"

I roll my eyes and say, "Debriefing sounds a whole lot better all of a sudden." But then I say seriously, "I can't be an agent. I can't kill people. It's just wrong…"

"Don't worry," she says, holding my hand reassuringly. "Killing is only a small part of what we do. Our main goal is to save lives, and I'm sure you'd love to do that," she says, smiling at me. After looking at her perfect face for a few moments, I feel like moving down and kissing her. She starts closing her eyes in anticipation, but I just smile.

"Yeah, you're right. I wouldn't mind being a hero…" I say. She regains her composure and gives me a tour of the pyramid and the peripheral structures, holding my hand like this the whole time.

**The President decided I had a very special ability. He assigned me to the bomb squad after reviewing Iva's logs and video that had been captured during out time together.**

**While DUCE, the secret agency I now worked for rebuilt itself, me and Iva decided to take a vacation. And we knew exactly where we wanted to go. We went to the island that we washed up on after we had gotten ambushed.**

I was circling the island like I used to before we left last time. Every time I passed by Iva, I waved hi to her and she waved back. It was a very nice atmosphere. When I was almost pooped from all the running, Iva beckoned for me to come to her so we could eat the food she had prepared. It had a taste that suited the whole island thing and it was very delicious.

"Keitaro?" Iva says as we lay side by side, watching the stars twinkle.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think would have happened if we just stayed on this island from the beginning, just the two of us?" she asks, looking at me. I continue to look at the night sky with a thoughtful look on my face.

"I don't really know," I say. Then I crack a warm smile. "But I know I would probably be happy…" Iva smiles two. She looks up at the sky with me while we stare in awe, out fingers intertwining with warmth that made the harsh fall night bearable.

(O One Week Later O)

I have finally come back from my "interview" after two whole months.

**The girls were surprised how different things became with his sudden disappearance. Since they had no school, the days were boring and they got bored to the point that they actually searched for him. It ended in failure, so they decided not to mention that.**

Needless to say, the girls were very excited about my return and smothered me at the foyer when I came in.

"Watcha get me?" Su says, her legs wrapped around mine.

"Fresh bananas from a tropical island!" I say, pulling out a bunch of bananas from the bag I brought with me. I dispense my other gifts accordingly; a bottle of sake from Okinawa for Mistune, a samurai scroll for Motoko, a artifact for Sarah, a watermelon for Mutsumi, a golden spatula for Shinobu, a whip for Haruka, and for Naru…

"What the Hell?" Naru says, furious.

"It's for your Liddo-kun," I explain when I realize what my present looks like from her angle.

**Drum roll please…**

"Pervert!"

And I was sent to the stratosphere.

Yet again…

"Good job," Mitsune says with a grin. "We weren't ready for the party yet." Naru just stared at her fist and remarked at how quickly she had sent me flying. She felt a little embarrassed.

"Naru-sempai?" Shinobu says.

"Do you think Keitaro-sempai got his job?" she asks.

"I don't know Shinobu-chan, but I'll ask him for you," Naru replies.

"Thanks, Naru-sempai." With that, she goes to the kitchen to cook a welcome back lunch for her most favorite person.

After the crazy party that happens when I came back from one of Naru's trademark punches, I went to my room, happy to be among the girls I loved so much. Naru was a little tipsy, but she remembered that she was supposed to ask about how my interview went.

"Naru!" I say, surprised by her visit. "Are you okay?" I say, helping her up.

"I'm fine, just a little drunk," she says, but then suspiciously, "Don't take advantage of me now!"

I just smile, happy to see her acting normal again. "Don't worry, Naru. I would never hurt you…" I say longingly. Even after all this time away from her, she seems as beautiful as ever. And the small smile that adorns her face made her even cuter.

"So, did you get your job?" she asks me, sitting across my table from me. I look confused for a second, but then I remember.

"Oh, that… you see," I start.

"Don't worry, Keitaro," Naru says with a reassuring look on her face. "We won't be angry with you for being rejected again. Just don't start lying to us about it; you know how much trouble you get into when you start doing that." I look like I had a knife thrown to my forehead.

I chuckle and say, "I actually did get the job. I kind of had no choice…"

"Really?" Naru says, incredulous. "What kind of job is it? You don't have to move or anything, do you?"

"No, don't worry about that. I won't be disappearing anytime soon," I say, waving my hand back and forth. "About my job though," I say a bit sheepishly. "I don't really have an assignment yet. I'm still being trained." Naru laughs.

"I was expecting that from you for some reason!" she says between chuckles.

"What? Why would you say that?" I reply hotly.

"I dunno. You have a tendency to get the short end of the stick," Naru says, the alcohol making her very honest. The two of us keep on talking, catching up on each other's lives, talking about old times and what we plan on doing on our first semester of college.

"It's getting late," Naru says after she yawns. She is feeling woozy and really doesn't want to fall asleep in my room. "I'll see you tomorrow," she says and moves to get out. Before she leaves, though, she says, "You've gotten cuter…" and slides the door behind her. I just stare with my mouth agape.

_Did Narusegawa just complement me?_

**Things settle back to their normal lull for the few weeks that remain of our summer. Of course, I'm sent flying across the Kanagawa prefecture, returning a large tourist industry back to our area… But instead of going straight back to the Hinata-sou, I get intercepted by my handler and I go through a bit of training. Mostly, he tells me what I need to do and demonstrates. I practice a few times in front of him to make sure I have it down, and do the real work back in the Hinata-sou. Motoko has gotten interested in my training and spends a few hours with my almost ever day**

**Things have gotten a lot better though. I've become a lot less clumsy, so I don't fly too much. Shinobu studies with me regularly, so we have gotten really close. Kitsune is the same as always, but she been a lot less severe, which alarms me… Sarah and Su are exactly the same and Mutsumi has yet to return from Okinawa. Naru and I are actually hanging out once in a while! It's so weird what almost getting killed can do to a guy… And of course, Tama-chan plays with me. She seems healthy, so I guess that they followed the instructions I put on the postcard a sent them. Tama-chan really seemed to miss me and is always perched on my shoulder or head.**

**A few days before school opened, we had the annual sakura blossom festival.**

By late morning, everyone assembles outside with their picnic gear laid out for the festivities. Kitsune is already drunk and the other older aged women are red in the face. I don't have any drinks, but I sketch on my pad instead. Shinobu looks at what I'm drawing and is delighted to see a sketch of an island that looks just like the place that we are staying at to watch the bloom.

**_The girls had found that having Keitaro back seemed to fill in a void that was missing. It was nice to be able to do normal things again, like picnicking with friends, or watching Naru send Keitaro flying. Not that she did that… yet._**

**_Naru_****_ herself was very happy that he was back. She had no idea how much she missed him. Even though the first semester of Todai was about to start, she didn't really feel all that happy until Keitaro came back to the picture._**

**_And she was surprised at how much he had changed since she last saw him. He had a sense of confidence and greatness about him now. _He had gotten suave. _He seemed taller, metaphorically, and had a sense of danger to him. Not that his kind and tender side was gone. It was still there. It was one of the things that attracted Naru to him._**

**_Naru_****_ blushed._**

**_She would never have thought she'd see him in that way, but there was just something so… exciting about him. And the look on his face while he was drawing… it was so dreamy. She was looking forward to the upcoming semester._**

I was looking at one of the trees when I think I see something. I squint, but it is still hard to see. I get up to investigate it, but a gentle wind blows first, causing all the loose sakura petals to float around lazily, turning the whole place pink. The girls stand in awe at the spectacle; even Su stand still! Only when the wind calms down, did I notice the figure's outline.

My face lit up. I ran to the tree and tackled the person to the ground, saying, "It's been so long since we last met!" I hold her in a tight embrace, causing her to squirm under me like I used to squirm under her.

"You've gotten stronger," she says as I let go. I stand up and give her a hand while the other girls come up from behind me to see what is going on. It isn't until they are really close that they can tell that I'm talking to a person.

"Wow, you really blend in!" Su says ecstatically. When Naru sees that I'm holding a girl's hand, she explodes.

"Keitaro you pervert! Why did you tackle that poor defenseless girl!"

"No, Narusegawa! She's a friend!" I say, backing away slowly.

"Pervert Punch!" she yells, and I go to Todai early in the year.

Audience member: Hey, what's the deal! The movie's not done yet!

Movie personnel: Sorry people, the bulb burned the reel. You'll have to come back for a different Showtime.

Audience member: What kind of theater is this? I want my money back!

Audience: Boo!

(-O-)

**Well, it feels half assed, but I have to stop here…**

**Why you say?**

**What could possibly make an author stop in the middle of a story?**

**Well, being detained by the NSA for one thing.**

**Not that that is happening to me…**

**I am going to stop writing up until mid august!**

**Why?**

**I will be traveling abroad to the Mid East and Asia till then, and I probably wont be able to get anything done till I get back. So, don't expect anything till mid august. Check my profile for the status of all my work**

**And remember, click the 'Go' button. (Flames are understandable, especially if critical)**

**Cheers :)**


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